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I turn, my heart skipping a beat as the heat from her lips warms mine. “Is it wrong that I think about kissing you almost all the time?” I ask, deciding to keep leaning into this whole honesty and kindness thing.
“No, it’s perfect,” she says, pressing a soft, almost innocent kiss to my lips that nevertheless leaves me hard and dying to be inside her. “Now, let’s go eat.” She chuckles softly. “Once you get that under control.”
“It’s your fault,” I say, adjusting yet another embarrassing hard-on. “This is what you do to me.”
“I love that I do that to you,” she says, her eyes flashing as she slips out the passenger’s side. “And I want to do it to you again later. Maybe several times.”
“This isn’t helping,” I breathe.
She smiles, a dazzling grin that makes me fall a little more in love with her on the spot. “I’m not on helper duty tonight, doctor. I’m here to seduce you with my feminine wiles.”
“You’re doing a great job so far. Ten out of ten. Would submit myself to said wiles again and again.”
“Perfect.” She giggles and slams the door. After a beat, I manage to arrange myself in a more discreet fashion and exit the truck behind her.
I give my name at the host stand and an older woman in a starched white button-down and black pants shows us through the garden to a small patio at the very back with a rock wall fountain on one side. It’s surrounded by carefully trimmed potted trees and the most private table in the restaurant.
“I think this is what you were hoping for?” the woman asks, smiling at me as I pull Wren’s seat out for her.
“It’s perfect,” I say, discreetly pressing a twenty into her hand. “I appreciate it.”
“And we appreciate you choosing Maria’s,” she says, backing away. “The menus are on the table, and I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your drink orders.”
“Barrett,” Wren says, leaning in with wide eyes as I settle into the seat across from hers. “How did you pull this off in a few hours?”
“I made a few phone calls,” I say. “And was assertive about asking for a good table.”
“No, I don’t mean the table,” she says. “I mean, the table is amazing, but I meant this.” She holds up the menu, pointing to the top, where it reads, “For Barrett and Wren, a Special Do-Over Menu.”
I smile. “You like?”
“I love. It’s beautiful.” She glances back at the menu, smoothing a gentle hand down the page of thick paper. “Am I cheesy if I take it with me and save it in my scrapbook?”
“Am I cheesy if I do the same and I don’t even have a scrapbook?”
“Not at all.” She grins, a warmth in her eyes that makes me hope the rest of the night goes as well as the first few minutes.
This is all I want. To make her feel special and happy and safe to let down her guard with me again.
And this time, I won’t ever make her regret it.
We share a salad and grilled octopus as an appetizer, Wren gets the gnocchi for her entrée and I go with the balsamic grilled chicken, and we share a bowl of assorted gelato for dessert. The entire meal, the conversation flows as easily as it used to during our daily teatime. We chat about what we’re looking forward to at the conference, Christian and Starling’s meme war—apparently, he’s meme-ing her now and she isn’t pleased about it—and the chances that Keanu Reeves might be a lab experiment gone wrong.
“Or gone right,” she counters around a bit of raspberry gelato. “He may have strange claws for a dog and bionic jumping abilities, but he also has a sweet little heart. He clearly adores you. As soon as he heard us fighting this morning, he was on his way to the rescue, possum tail at attention.”
“His rescue skills need work,” I say, explaining that he promptly peed on my shoes as soon as he reached the bathroom. “But I agree. His heart is in the right place. And if anyone understands the normalcy learning curve, it’s me.”
Wren’s smile fades. “Can I ask you a question? Kind of a personal one?”
I set down my gelato spoon and wipe my hands on my napkin, bracing myself for the worst. “Shoot.”
Her lips twitch. “You aren’t actually facing a firing squad. It’s just a question, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. You have the right to say no and set boundaries about how much you’re willing to share. I won’t be mad.”
“Shoot, woman,” I repeat. “Before I change my mind.”
She exhales a slightly nervous laugh. “Okay. I was just wondering. My mom and I were chatting today, and she said something that made me think. About you. And I just, I wonder if you ever feel like you’re on the outside looking in.”
